How Recruiters Can Earn a Seat at the Strategy Table

To get a coveted seat at executive leadership meetings, recruiters have to demonstrate that top-notch recruitment drives costs down, profits up, and helps build a work culture capable of achieving their company’s long-term goals.

A solid recruiting strategy is crucial for outstanding growth. In fact, Boston Consulting Group has shown that companies who excel in recruitment actually have 3.5 times greater growth in revenue than competitors.

Since your company’s existing profits depend on employees you already have, building for the future depends on thoroughly understanding your best and brightest and creating a culture and brand that attracts and retains more of them.

Companies that invest in their employee experience this way have shown to have 3x the ROI compared to other organizations. When you align your company’s larger goals with demonstrable recruitment metrics, you’ll be able to show executive leadership the value recruiting has on building long-lasting growth for your company—and get a seat at your next leadership meeting.

Recruiting for Retention

It’s no secret that a fantastic hire can significantly affect a company’s profit. In fact, a top performer can be worth 10-100x their annual compensation for each year they remain at the company. But hiring these all-star employees only works if you can keep them.

To convince executive leadership that recruiting has a major impact on growth, show them that employee turnover is costly—it impacts not only your bottom line but the morale and cohesiveness of your team. With the average cost-to-hire $4,129 in the US, turnover of employees quickly adds up.

That means it’s important to get the right employee the first time around. Even if your company’s next Lebron James does contribute positively in the short term, their overall value (and ROI) will diminish once they’re willingly snatched up by their next highest bidder. Rerun the ads, interviews, and take time away from your staff (again) and you’ve got a loss that outweighs any short-term profit they may have provided.

Show your leadership team that retention increases revenue. It’s that simple.

If you can keep a top-performing individual at your company longer, each year they stay will lead to even greater revenue and growth. Retention also drives the cost of hiring down and helps build loyal, profitable employees with a vested interest in your company. In the long term, your most profitable employees are also your most loyal.

Align Company Goals

Start speaking in a language your executive team understands. Since your company’s vision is long-term, your recruiting strategy should be too. It’s important to build a recruiting strategy focused on growth and ROI – with long term goals in mind, not short-term fixes.

Getting clear on the type of people you want in your company for the long haul requires aligning recruitment with your company’s larger goals. Once you do this, you can develop a scalable recruitment method to find these people and set up a streamlined way to continue growing.

Sit down with leadership to determine what types of applicants fit with the long-term vision of the company. The right qualifications are just as important as the right fit. Discover what drives your current employees. What keeps them around? What motivates them?

Getting a seat at the table requires understanding your best employees and having a solid strategy for attracting and retaining more.

Instead of focusing only on holy-grail metrics like cost-per-hire, time-per-hire, and training hours, collaborate with finance to build metrics to track your hiring success – specifically how recruiting affects revenue over time.

Intangible, Magical Growth

More than just dollar-per-dollar ROI, solid recruiting also builds long-term growth for your company that’s a little more difficult to measure—your employer brand.

The truth is: every new hire should help build and grow your culture. The more that every one of your employees is excited to work for you, the better candidates you’ll be able to attract in the future.

Great recruiting builds a positive feedback loop of better and better talent knocking on your door.

Just like marketing, your recruitment efforts should create strong pipelines for potential applicants to encounter your brand and one day be moved to actually apply for a job. And the applicant experience also helps reinforce and strengthen your employer brand too.

Make it clear to your executive leadership that recruiting is more than just filling an empty seat. From start to finish, the entire applicant experience is an important part of growing your company’s reputation as an excellent place to work. If applicants aren’t a good fit now, they may be in the future, so a positive applicant experience goes a long way.

Spell It Out For Stakeholders: Quality Recruiting Drives ROI

Earning a seat at executive meetings requires demonstrating in verifiable ways how attracting and choosing the right employees the first time around directly impacts the growth of the company at all levels – both financially and culturally.

Show your executive team that you understand your company’s vision and that it is front and center of your recruitment strategy. This will attract and retain top talent at your company, and help you earn and keep your seat among other leaders.

When executive leadership can see the value in investing in recruiting the right candidates, they’ll also see how recruiting can grow profits and strengthen the brand. Soon, they’ll come to count recruitment among the critically important voices at the table and recognize it as a crucial part of growing the company and sustaining its long-term success.

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